The courteous Spaniard conceals his contempt for the foreigner, but were he privileged to read the numerous sketches, scenes, and saunterings published yearly of Spain, he would have some scope for legitimate amusement. A faint remonstrance has indeed been heard in the Peninsula against the idea of Spanish grandees lying in wait at dark corners to rob a French journalist of his fortune. But mostly they are content to let the foreigner continue in his ignorance. For stern and melancholy Spain retains her secret, and is not to be won from her Oriental impenetrable mystery by any wiles. Unchanging and impassive, her cities seem to mock the stranger, and the roughness of the intervening wildernesses discourages him. But he returns again and again to this remote and mediæval country, that in his practical eyes should be so rich and is so poor. The repulses he receives whet his curiosity and increase his ardour. Yet Spain is not, in spite of its many tourists, a country of foreign colonies. To the Englishman this fact brings a striking novelty, for he may visit Switzerland and Italy and France and scarcely leave the atmosphere of England, but in Spain he will find no difficulty in following Bacon’s advice to the traveller in foreign countries to “sequester himself from the company of his countrymen.”
CONTENTS
| PAGE | ||
| [Note] | [v] | |
| [Preface] | [vii] | |
| [I.] | Spanish Character— | |
| i. Some Stray Opinions | [17] | |
| ii. Vain Generalities | [25] | |
| [II.] | Travelling in Spain | [47] |
| [III.] | On the Spanish Frontier | [57] |
| [IV.] | Eskual-Erria— | |
| i. Basque Country | [66] | |
| ii. Basque Customs | [72] | |
| [V.] | In Remote Navarre | [80] |
| [VI.] | Spanish Cities | [85] |
| [VII.] | In Old Castille | [92] |
| [VIII.] | The Desert and the Sown | [97] |
| [IX.] | The Coast of Catalonia in Autumn | [104] |
| [X.] | An Eastern Village | [108] |
| [XI.] | Off the East Coast of Spain | [112] |
| [XII.] | The Judging of the Waters | [120] |
| [XIII.] | Seville in Winter | [125] |
| [XIV.] | From a Seville Housetop | [129] |
| [XV.] | February in Andalucía | [134] |
| [XVI.] | Some Characteristics of Spanish Literature | [142] |
| [XVII.] | The Poem of the Cid— | |
| i. A Primitive Masterpiece | [153] | |
| ii. Valencia del Cid | [157] | |
| [XVIII.] | A Prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition— | |
| i. Novedades | [163] | |
| ii. Salamanca University | [165] | |
| iii. In a Valladolid Dungeon | [169] | |
| iv. Ex forti dulcedo | [178] | |
| [XIX.] | The Modern Spanish Novel— | |
| i. Revival. Fernán Caballero | [185] | |
| ii. 1870-1900 | [191] | |
| iii. In the Twentieth Century | [201] | |
| [XX.] | Novels of Galicia | [214] |
| [XXI.] | Novels of the Mountain | |
| i. “Savour of the Soil” | [222] | |
| ii. “On the Heights” | [231] | |
| [XXII.] | Castilian Prose | [239] |
| [XXIII.] | Toledo and El Greco | [244] |
| [Index]:[A],[B],[C],[D],[E],[F],[G],[H],[I],[J],[K],[L],[M],[N],[O],[P],[Q],[R],[S],[T],[U],[V],[W],[Z] | [259] |
THE MAGIC OF SPAIN